11:24 am - Something for you allToday, I would like you all to know that your experience of life is precious.

Never let anyone tell you it's not, or that you should be something different, or that you should be like them.

God made you to be yourself, including both your gifts and your baggage (that can be grown through and healed), and there is no one who can stand up and fill the place you were created for the same way that you are able to. It is your story we need, and your heart and self that even God himself is lonely for.

Comments:

All of this, indeed. Which is so difficult, and I am almost 31 and only just now beginning to get past the place where I cling to this idea in desperation and disbelief (too good to be true), into a place where sometimes, some bits of every day, I can live it in and be content instead of afraid.

We must find a way to stop being ashamed of the years when we did believe these lies. I'm starting to think that's the very hardest part.

We must find a way to stop being ashamed of the years when we did believe these lies.

This too. ::points emphatically::

Y'know what sprang to mind? Whoever it is who's been trying to make you someone other than yourself. If anyone should feel ashamed...

I spent a couple decades trying to be an emotional Fort Knox. I feel very stupid now. But, if anything, it will teach me (hopefully) to have a tremendous amount of grace for people who are still believing lies. Also, it's the "big" lessons, the difficult/painful/embarrassing lessons, that we learn best. Not because we're stupid. For a reason I don't yet know, God has determined that I must know this Thing About Emotions very, very well. Perhaps not so much for my sake, but for someone else's.